Chapter 34
His thumb moved gently across her knuckles.
Precise and deliberate. The same gesture from the crawl space, when his hand had said everything his mouth couldn’t.
The light in the room was dim, snow drifting and obscuring the window. The world reduced to this room. This bed. The heat between them.
Katya’s words sat heavy in her chest.
Alexei. The watch. His choice.
She knew things about him now that he hadn’t given her. Things that changed the shape of every moment they’d shared—why he stepped back, never letting anything get close enough to matter.
She understood it all.
His hand lifted as he brushed a strand of hair back from her face, his fingers grazing her temple, her ear—lingering just long enough to pull a breath from her she didn’t mean to give.
His palm settled on her neck. Warm and firm and right over her pulse. He leaned in and kissed her there.
Heat flared low and sharp as she inhaled, her body reacting before she could think her way through it.
“You’re sure?” He pulled back an inch, his breath skimming her skin.
“Sure.”
Something shifted in him at that. He moved carefully, making room for his injured shoulder, then eased behind her on the bed, his chest coming to her back, solid and warm—the full length of him aligning with her in a way that felt familiar and completely different all at once.
His mouth found her again—lower this time as he lifted her hair, at the nape of her neck.
Her breath caught.
He ran his hands down her arms, and the line of her shoulders dropped. The tension she’d been carrying in the muscles between her shoulder blades dissolved under the warmth of his touch.
Her body trusted him. The argument was over.
He found the buttons at the back of the dress. A soft pop and the fabric loosened. Cool air slipped across her spine, and she drew in a breath, the contrast sharp against the heat of his hands.
He stilled. Not long. Just enough to feel it. His fingers rested against her skin where the dress had parted, above the plain cotton band of the borrowed bra.
She knew exactly what this changed.
What it cost him to want this.
His breath left him slow against her shoulder.
One button. Then another. The dress opened fully at her back, the fabric falling away as his warmth followed the cool air across her skin.
His hand reached the clasp of her bra and stopped.
Waiting.
As if her next breath mattered more than anything else.
She reached back and covered his fingers with hers. “Yes.”
The clasp gave.
She closed her eyes as he traced the path he’d opened. His fingertips on her spine—reading her body with the same attention he gave to terrain.
It was all she could do to keep breathing. No one had ever touched her with this kind of focus. As if he intended to commit her to memory and never forget.
The borrowed bra loosened, the straps slipping off her shoulders with the dress. His hands followed—down her arms, sliding the fabric free.
He was behind her, his chest against her bare back, the contact total now.
Just him.
His good arm came around her, palm flat against her sternum. His pulse beat a fierce rhythm against her skin. His injured arm stayed lower, careful, his hand resting at her hip rather than pulling.
His mouth returned to her neck—the hollow behind her ear, the tendon, the place where her pulse beat fast and visible. His hands moved with a patience she now understood as care from a man who believed caring was the thing that broke you.
The loosened fabric caught on the slope of her breasts. He pushed it clear and her skin grew taut beneath the sudden exposure.
His good hand traced the underside of her breast. Slow, then up, the rough pad of his thumb skimming over her nipple, and the sensation tore through her so cleanly a small sound escaped her.
He did it again. More leisurely this time. As if he’d heard her and wanted to know exactly what part of it had pulled the sound out.
Her head dropped back against his shoulder. She couldn’t help it. Her body had stopped asking her mind for permission.
“Pav.”
His mouth pressed harder at her neck in answer.
His injured arm stayed low around her, anchoring her at the hip. His good hand rested high against her chest briefly, his breathing at her back not as steady as his hands.
He was holding the line there while everything else in him slipped. This was hitting him as much as it was her.
Then his good hand slid down across the plane of her stomach, tracing the line of her ribs, the dip of her navel, where her breath was shallow and fast. Under the dress now, where the fabric pooled at her hips, his palm was warm against her belly, fingers spread wide, absorbing the tremor she was holding in.
He stilled, his breath a scant shudder of exhalation, his mouth resting at the curve of her neck.
Then his touch drifted lower to the line of her underwear. He traced the edge—once, twice—the way he’d traced her spine. Testing, asking without asking.
She pressed back against him. That was her answer. She knew what she was asking for and she wanted it anyway.
His hand slipped beneath the fabric. Through her curls, to where she was already slick and aching for him, had been from the moment his mouth touched her neck.
He made a sound near her ear. Low. Almost a breath. As if the discovery cost him something. Then his fingers moved, learning the shape of her. When he found the one point that mattered, the calloused pad of his finger moved in controlled circles.
Her hips jerked against his touch without her permission.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against her ear—the same voice, the same certainty he used when the world was ending.
He didn’t stop.
The rough pad of his finger teased exactly where she needed it, and his mouth was on her neck—the tendon, the pulse, a soft graze of teeth that made her breath stutter—and she couldn’t tell anymore which sensation was which, only that her body was climbing toward something she couldn’t slow down.
She turned her face into his.
His mouth caught the corner of her jaw, then her cheekbone, then nothing—just his breath against her skin as his fingers kept their pace with the patience of a man who had decided exactly how this was going to go.
Pleasure built in waves that came faster than she could breathe through.
She held on to his forearm as he pressed his mouth to her temple.
She was making sounds now. She didn’t know when that started. Small, broken things at the back of her throat, and each one seemed to tighten his arm around her, draw him closer, as if every sound was something he was collecting.
“Pav—” Her voice cracked on it. “I can’t—"
“Harper.” The pressure of his touch increased, just enough.
Her world narrowed—everything pulling tight, drawing inward, until there was only one point left under his hand, one place everything in her was collapsing toward—
“Pav.” Not a word this time, a gasp—and then there was no holding it back.
It broke through her in waves, deeper than she was ready for. His mouth stayed at her temple as his fingers gentled, easing her down without lifting away.
When her breath finally came back to her, his mouth moved from her temple to her cheek, brushed there, soft, and he turned her in his arms to face him.
She looked at him. The man she’d thought he was when she first met him, and every version of him in between.
She’d been moving toward this long before she knew his name. Before tonight, she’d thought she’d do what she always did—keep some part of herself outside of this.
A reserve. A small, sensible corner of her that stayed her own.
She lifted her hand to his face.
There was no corner left. Not one she could retreat to.